Thursday, June 28, 2012

A lost life, a lost game, a lost job

Worse things happened in the Twins organization the past 24 hours or so than Wednesday's game, although that was plenty bad.

I refer to the death of Paul Bargas, the left-handed pitcher the Twins acquired from Colorado in exchange for Jose Morales after the 2010 season. Bargas never threw a pitch for the Minnesota organization; he was found during spring training 2011 to have a brain tumor. There was talk last winter that he was ready to try to play again, but ... it didn't happen. He was 23.

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The highlight, or lowlight, ofJeff Manship's tenure this time aroundwas the day he pitched with the nameon his jersey misspelled.

Jeff Manship pitched one inning Wednesday, giving up three runs. This pushed his ERA up to 10.27, and the Twins optioned him back to Rochester and called up Kyle Waldrop.

I thought Waldrop was likely to make the team during spring training, but he strained his right elbow in the final week or so and spent quite a while on the disabled list. He had a 1.29 ERA in Rochester (14.3 innings) since returning, but that comes with suspect walk and strikeout rates (five walks, five K's).

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Leading up to Wednesday's nooner, Cory Provus, after talking about White Sox starter Chris Sale, told us that Twins starter Nick Blackburn "is also throwing the ball well."

This was a rather bizarre claim, considering that Blackburn's ERA entering the game was 7.45 and he had just one quality start in his 11 outings. Blackburn's 4-4 record had more to do with run support and bullpen help than his work. (And things didn't improve Wednesday.)

Provus has been a sizable upgrade on John Gordon. But talking up Blackburn's season just erodes credibility.